Connecticut physicians are among the nation’s leaders in dispensing drugs in their office to injured workers, an escalating cost that ricochets back on employers, a new study says.
The Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI), in Cambridge, Mass., said it examined the growth of physician-dispensed pharmaceuticals for injured workers under state workers’ compensation in Connecticut and 22 other states.
According to the study, the frequency and cost of physician-dispensed drugs in Connecticut grew the second fastest among the 23 states studied. Thirty-seven percent of drug payments in Connecticut were paid to physicians who dispense drugs at their offices, rather than to pharmacies—an increase from 16 percent three years earlier.
This raises costs to employers since the prices paid to physicians were typically much higher than what was paid to pharmacies for the same drug.
“We rarely see a medical cost driver that has grown this rapidly,” said Richard Victor, MD, WCRI’s executive director.
It cited as an example the cost of the most commonly used drug, Vicodin, nearly quadrupled when dispensed by physicians compared to the pharmacy—an average of $1.43 per pill at the physicians’ offices versus 37 cents at the pharmacy.
Moreover, the study found that the prices of physician dispensed drugs rose very rapidly during the three years studied. For example, the price for Vicodin increased by 66 percent. In contrast, the price of this drug dispensed at pharmacies dropped over the same period of time.
The data used for this study include nearly 5.7 million prescriptions paid under workers’ compensation for approximately 758,000 claims from 23 states over a period from 2007-2008 to 2010-2011.
The other states in the study: include Arkansas, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Several — Arizona, California, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee — recently adopted reforms aimed at reducing the prices of physician-dispensed drugs, WCRI said.
